As a person, Italian poet was worse than his verse

Gabriele D'Annunzio is not a household name in the United States. That might be just as well - judging by Lucy Hughes-Hallett's sharp-tongued biography of the poet.

Margaret Quamme, For The Columbus Dispatch

Gabriele D’Annunzio is not a household name in the United States. That might be just as well — judging by Lucy Hughes-Hallett’s sharp-tongued biography of the poet.

D’Annunzio might have been the best-known poet in early 20th-century Italy, and he is still well-known there. He was also a politician — if not a particularly dedicated one — and a serial seducer of women, whom he enjoyed most when they were in tears.

Hughes-Hallett’s lengthy, relatively unsympathetic account of his life studies him as an early and successful example of the artist as self-created celebrity. Besides writing poetry, novels and hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles, the dandyish, decadent D’Annunzio gave inflammatory political speeches and made sure he was often photographed in his role as a daring World War I aviator. He also entangled himself in the lives of the rich and famous, including actress Eleonora Duse.

In one of the more notable and stranger episodes of his life, the poet — aided by a group of “ proto-fascists” and “proto-hippies” with a taste for cocaine and sexual experimentation — declared himself in 1919 the ruler of Fiume (now Rijeka, Croatia), a port city on the Adriatic in the new country of Yugoslavia.

D’Annunzio was repelled by “the masses” and bored by the details of administration. He might well have been relieved when, after less than two years, the Italian army took control of the city and booted him out.

Throughout his life, D’Annunzio kept extensive journals, many of them devoted to the details of his sexual experiences. Hughes-Hallett devotes an unnecessarily large part of the book to retelling these many encounters.

The author interlaces conventional biographical chapters with chapters made up of vignettes from the poet’s life. The most successful ones alternate scenes from the last two decades of his life and scenes of the rise to power of Mussolini, whose fascist style and message were heavily influenced by the poet. The result is chilling.

The biographer quotes only short, translated passages of D’Annunzio’s work, so it is difficult for American readers to understand why he was such an impressive literary figure. He comes across as a flamboyant, repellent individual with more influence than might be expected on the role of Italy in World War II, which began a year after his death.

margaretquamme@hotmail.com

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